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Double opt-in requires new contacts to confirm their subscription before you can send them marketing emails. This improves list quality and deliverability.

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Good to know

This feature only applies to marketing sends (campaigns and loops). Transactional emails are never restricted by double opt-in. Double opt-in is currently only enabled on Form endpoints. API endpoints like Create contact and Update contact are not yet gated. Coverage will expand to these endpoints soon.

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The double opt-in flow

When double opt-in is enabled:
  1. Contact submits a form and receives a confirmation email with a link to a branded confirmation page.
  2. The confirmation page displays Confirm subscription and No thanks buttons.
  3. Contacts appear in your audience as “Pending” in the Double opt-in column.
  4. Contact confirms or rejects the subscription:
    1. If they click Confirm subscription, they’re subscribed to your audience and any selected mailing lists. This also triggers any applicable loops.
    2. If they click No thanks, they remain in your audience but are marked as unsubscribed.
      They can request a new confirmation email from the same page if they clicked No thanks by accident.
      Unsubscribed contacts do not count towards your plan’s limits.
    3. If they don’t respond, the contact continues to appear as “Pending”. Pending contacts are not automatically removed. You can manually delete them if needed.
Double opt-in confirmation page

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Enable double opt-in

To enable double opt-in, go to Settings -> Sending and scroll to the Double opt-in section. Turn the Double opt-in setting on. This creates a special transactional email that is used to confirm the subscription, which you can customize in the Transactional page in the Loops dashboard. To disable double opt-in, turn the Double opt-in setting off. Double opt-in settings

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Customize the confirmation email

The opt-in email is a special transactional email that is created automatically when you first turn on double opt-in in your account. You are free to customize the email as you like but it has specific requirements:
  • Keep the email short, clearly branded, and focused on the confirmation action.
  • Include the required data variable optInUrl (added automatically when the email is created).
  • Other data variables are not allowed.
Click Edit Draft to edit the email. Make sure to click Publish after editing to make your changes live.

Transactional email guide

Learn how to create and send transactional email with Loops.

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Manually re-send a confirmation email

You can re-send a confirmation email to a contact from their profile page. This is only available for contacts who are currently “Pending”. On a contact’s profile page, click the ••• menu icon and choose Request opt-in. Request opt-in

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Webhooks and the API

When double opt-in is enabled, contact webhooks don’t fire until the contact is confirmed. Specifically:
  • The contact.created event will only be sent for contacts created via forms once the contact has confirmed their subscription.
  • Other contact-related webhooks (such as contact.mailingList.subscribed) will also only fire after confirmation.
  • Contacts remain in a “Pending” state in your audience until they confirm, and no webhook events are triggered during this pending state.
You can read a contact’s opt-in status from the API by looking at the optInStatus field in the Find contact endpoint.
Last modified on January 18, 2026